The National Care Service: the rights of children and young people

Snow Curtis Kolu outlines what the National Care Service needs to do to work for children, young people, and families.

There are many unknowns around the inclusion of children’s services within the scope of the National Care Service (NCS), including its links to existing programmes for transformation and how meaningful participation of children, young people and families in decision making has or will be ensured. As their inclusion is a central tenant to Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) and a human rights-based approach, their voices are critical at all levels.

Without a human rights-based approach, the new service may simply resume, or potentially exacerbate, the existing challenges as set out by the Independent Care Review (this link will take you away from our website) – echoed by the findings of includem’s recent Voices report (this link will take you away from our website).

Based on these findings, we’ve highlighted four key areas that must be considered if the NCS is to work for children, young people and family services.

1. Poverty: mitigating the wider economic and social factors impacting wellbeing

A rights respecting approach requires consideration of the economic and social factors that impede access to human rights and widens the poverty related wellbeing gap. Low wages, inadequate social security, cuts to support and inequalities result in a postcode lottery for local services and safety. It is critical to address the pressures experienced by families in poverty and its impacts on their physical and mental health.

Voices report: “I sometimes struggle but I just get on with it…My kids would never go without, I would, but not them. Sometimes I only eat one meal a day.”

2. Trust: relationship-based practice and whole family support

The NCS must be built to respond to the needs of those it seeks to support, rather than the requirements of a system or institutions. This requires flexibility and responsiveness based on individual and family needs and local factors. As a result of experiences of stigma and shame, rebuilding trust through relationship-based practice is crucial. In recognition of the importance of family wellbeing to the lives of children and young people, whole family support must be at the heart of the new service.

Clear communication is essential, including the need to rethink recording, ensuring it serves to help support families and takes a genuine approach to iterative informed consent, rather than creating a culture of suspicion.

Voices report: “I don’t feel comfortable speaking to social work, I don’t have a relationship with them.”

3. Complexity: a responsive and holistic approach

From a wide range of daily struggles with poverty, experiences of domestic abuse, neurodiversity, mental health, substance misuse and more, children, young people and families face multiple inter-related challenges. There are considerable gaps and complexity in services, particularly in early intervention and limits to support between social work and CAMHS, with families reaching crisis point before being able to access help.

The close integration and links between health, education, social care, family support and youth justice are key for effective prevention and early intervention. Particularly for targeted support for children that are care experienced or deemed ‘at risk’, we must consider the risks and disruption that excluding services from the NCS may cause. For example, its proposed scope excludes early years and education services – fundamental to children’s wellbeing and continuity of preventative and early intervention.

The creation of a NCS needs to ensure it addresses rather than reinforces existing gaps and disconnect in service provisions – with a holistic approach across support services that are simple and easy to navigate and access. These must be responsive and in place before families hit crisis point. This could include access to early intervention based on self-reporting, investment in a wider range of community-based support, and family advocates with skills in preventative approaches in situations of complex needs.

 4. Investment: parity of esteem and improvement

While the potential for additional resources in the implementation of the NCS is welcome, there are real concerns on how this will be allocated.

Services provided to children and young people, while interconnected, are distinct from adult services. Due to the scale of acute issues also experienced in adult services and Scotland’s aging population, there is real concern that the integration of children’s services risks a lack of parity in funding. The significance of our earliest experiences in life to our wellbeing, health and ability to thrive cannot be underestimated, and children’s services need to be given equal status with adult services – particularly as preventative and early intervention can avoid more costly interventions down the line.

Rather than the development of new organisational structures, investment should be driven by and focused on improvement to required support services. To embed real cultural change, investment into children’s services needs to encourage innovation and partnership working across different organisations, rather than competition. The NCS could strengthen a coherent approach in improvement and design and seek to ringfence resources to guide complex change and innovation. Additionally, structural change will not be effective without change to workforce conditions, giving them the time and space to provide proper support in this highly valuable and skilled work.

For children, young people and family services to truly benefit from the NCS, it must #KeepThePromise and have lived experience at its heart. We recognise and welcome the ambition for change to a sector that has struggled with challenging resourcing conditions for some time. However, the voices of children, young people and families and their needs cannot be the afterthought of a service designed for and by adults.

You can read more about the Voices report here (this link will take you away from our website).

This opinion is part of the ALLIANCE’s Future of Social Care series. You can find other entries in the series here.

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